Building partnerships for scaling access to justice for survivors of sexual violence in Pakistan

Date

2018-04-29

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Abstract

Gender-Based Violence (GBV) is a prevalent issue faced by vulnerable segments of the population and disproportionately impacts women in Pakistan. While legislative and policy reforms have been endorsed at the state level to protect women their activation and implementation remains in a limbo. Focus on legislation and policy reform remains greater than enforcement of such laws and the establishment of protection mechanisms contained within. This and other factors including lack of resources, lack of awareness and inter-departmental coordination and under trained staff directly contribute to the weak response and underreporting of GBV. Having a strong understanding of the key challenges and hurdles in survivors’ access to justice and protection through Dastak’s extensive work in the field, this project was designed to focus on promoting the activation and/or usage of existing services within the Punjab Women Protection System (PWPS), increase interplay between Dastak’s work and state mechanisms, develop tools that to aid responders in the field to use WPS more effectively and improve the quality of response given to survivors of GBV.

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JUSTICE, COURTS, GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE, GENDER JUSTICE, SEXUAL VIOLENCE, PAKISTAN, SOUTH ASIA

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